Continuous Peasant

Rock history is rife with examples of bands and artists whose crafty songwriting ways were enough to overcome crappy (at least in the conventional sense) vocals. Dylan is one, Lou Reed is another. Continuous Peasant, however, isn’t about to make that list anytime soon. Though vocalist/keyboardist Chris Stroffolino certainly has a distinctive singing style, the fact is his vocals are flat-out bad — pun intended. In contemporary terms, Wesley Willis is probably the only singer more consistently off key, which makes hearing the music beneath the caterwauling a challenge at the best of times. Stroffolino’s acute lack of skills is so overt it seems clear his band is trading on the woeful distinction as some sort of sad gimmick. Or maybe the idea is to make lousy vocalists everywhere feel better about themselves. Either way, some auditions would appear to be in order.